Wintery trains

On February 2, 2014, Colorado received a good amount of snow fall the night before that dropped almost a foot of snow in some places. Temperatures were well below freezing so nothing was melting. I decided to head out into the sub-zero temperatures to see what I could get. Fortunately, a southbound BNSF stack train wasn't far off. In Longmont, I first captured the train on Atwood Street. I decided to take a chance and drive to the overlook in Boulder to get another shot of the train. The sun decided to come out full which helped with the overall scene. Pictured here, a southbound stack train leaves the city of Boulder, Colo., with the Valmont Power Plant in the background after a good snow fall from the night before.

It's early January, and even though there's little snow on the ground here in the Northeast, the temperatures have been bitter from the southbound Canadian air masses pummeling the area. As a result, there has been lots of daily work for the MOW crews here at North Adams, Mass. as both this and the much longer Hoosac Tunnel have had more than their share of ice buildup. Just about to exit the "Little Tunnel" is eastbound PanAm Southern MOAY, with glistening icicles reflecting the approaching headlight beams in the twilight and "ice cold" temperatures.

Early winter storms walloped Western Iowa and Minnesota in December 2009 forcing railroads to call out plow extras to open lines throughout the region. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Bayard Sub, once part of the Milwaukee Road Chicago to Omaha mainline was completely closed. On December 28, a BNSF plow extra pushes east at Manilla through an icy landscape under blue skies and temperatures near zero.

In February 2008, the Heber Valley Railroad held their "Winter Steam Spectacular" on their ex-Rio Grande branch south of Heber City, Utah. The star of the three day event was their ex-Union Pacific 2-8-0 No. 1068, which powered "photo freights" consisting of vintage freight cars. Each morning we headed out onto the line where numerous photo runbys were held. The first two days were mostly sunny, with sub-freezing temperatures and two feet of snow on the ground, which provided outstanding photo opportunities. The final day, February 13, started out sunny, but a fierce winter storm to the west was heading our way. The skies darkened, the temperatures dropped to the teens, the snow squalls started, and then quarter-sized snowflakes began blowing sideways. We were delighted! The 1068's crew continued to conduct runbys, and we photographers kept taking photos. This photo was one of the last ones of the day, and was taken about two miles south of Heber City. Due to the weather conditions, and there being two feet of snow on the ground, we were dropped off from the caboose at a road crossing, where we formed a photo line. The train backed up, and then came forward slowly, with huge volumes of steam and smoke, which produced dramatic effects. No one in the photo line was disappointed.

Ice Cold - a great subject for late July. The shot that gave me shivers right away on this hot and humid day was one I took back in January 2013. On a day when temperatures struggled to get into double digits, I took a mile-long hike to get to a spot where the Providence & Worcester Railroad's Norwich Branch crosses Poquetanuck Cove on the Preston/Ledyard, Connecticut town line. With the sub-freezing temps the previous night, the cove got a coating of ice on most of it. And with the tide going out, some of the rocks punched through the ice, yielding some interesting formations (and sounds) as P&W train NR-2 rolled by, led by one of the railroad's former BNSF B40-8 wide cab locomotives.

The lights of an eastbound Union Pacific train flash across the Kate Shelley High Bridge on a cold February evening. Despite the lack of snow, February in Iowa is still very cold, especially when the sun goes down, and this evening was no exception. Light cloud cover adds effect to the sky but still allows some stars to shine through. Let's just say I was ready to warm up by the time I left!

On a crystal clear morning of January 22, 2012, I covered myself into multiple layers and headed out to the Richelieu river bridge in Beloeil, Quebec. The first train to show up was VIA 15, the Ocean, with the Gaspé-Montréal portion of the train on the head-end made up of classic stainless steel cars. With the air temperature hovering around -30C, the "warm" unfrozen water is creating quite a smoke show.

A manned helper set of Norfolk Southern SD40E's pops out of the New Portage Tunnel and head down "The Slide" on their journey to Altoona to help another train up the mountain. This is the steepest grade on the mountain at 2.46% and is almost exclusively used for movements down the mountain as the grade into the adjacent tunnel to the left is a more modest 1.86%.

With several railfanning options on my bucket list available for the weekend after Thanksgiving, a good early dumping east of me set my course to the Horseshoe Curve area and a stay at a local inn. On my second morning there, I went to the tunnel overlook before sunrise and found the trees and landscape covered in a beautiful frozen ice. It was bitterly cold and even in my full winter gear, I was good for just 30 minutes before I had to retreat to the car and had back to the inn for a warm breakfast.